2IO 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



[November 



dor and Greenland. Mr. South said that he had examined Dr. Walker's specimens, 

 and he believed that most of the forms exhibited had been described by Dr. Staudinger 

 in his papers on the Entomology of Iceland. 



Dr. Sharp exhibited a specimen of Ornithomyia avicularia, L., taken near Dartford, 

 to which there were firmly adhering — apparently by their mandibles — several speci- 

 mens of a mallophagous insect. He also exhibited some specimens of fragile Diptera, 

 Neuroptera, and Lepidoptera, to show that the terminal segments in both sexes might 

 be dissected off and mounted separately without the structures suffering from 

 shrivelling or distortion. Dr. Sharp also said, in reference to the statement made 

 by him, on p. 421 of his paper recently published in the "Transactions" of the 

 Society, as to the number of the segments of the abdomen, and the position of the 

 genital orifice in the females of Hemiptera-Heteroptera, that he had recently been 

 ma'dng some dissections, and found that the structures externally were difficult of 

 comprehension, and he now thought that the statement he had made from observation, 

 without dissection, might prove to be erroneous. 



Mr. G. F. Hampson exhibited and remarked on a series of Erebia melas. taken in 

 July last, in the Austrian Alps, f Dolomites,), by Mrs. Nicholls. Captain Elwes 

 observed that this species was abundant in the Pyrenees ; but although he had fre- 

 quently suggested to Dr. Staudinger and other European lepidopterists that it 

 probably occurred in the Swiss or Austrian Alps, he had never been able to obtain 

 specimens from any part of Europe except the Pyrenees ; and that it had been left to 

 an English lady to be the first to take a species of Erebia new to these Alps. He 

 added that the species only frequented very steep and stony slopes on the mountains, 

 so that its capture was attended with difficulty. 



Mr. M'Lachlan exhibited specimens of an extraordinary Neuropterous larva found 

 by Mr. B. G. Nevinson in tombs at Cairo. He said that this larva had been assigned 

 to the genus Nemoptera by Schaum, who described it as having been found in tombs 

 in Egypt (Berl. Ent. Zeitschrift, vol. i.) ; and Roux had previously fAnn. Sci. Nat. t. 

 xxviii^ described and figured it as an abnormal apterous hexapod under the name of 

 Necrophilus arenarius. Mr. Nevinson supplemented these remarks with an account 

 of his capture of the specimens in the Egyptian tombs. 



Mr. G. T. Baker exhibited a series of forms of the species of the genus Boarmia 

 from Madeira ; and also a series of melanic varieties of Gracilaria syringella from the 

 neighbourhood of Birmingham. 



Mr. W. F. H. Blandford exhibited and remarked on a series of specimens of 

 Dermestcs vidpinus, which had been doing much damage to the roofs of certain soap- 

 works in the neighbourhood of London, where it had no doubt been introduced with 

 bones and fat. 



Mr. R. W. Lloyd exhibited a specimen of Carabus catenulatus, in which the femur 

 of the right foreleg was curiously dilated and toothed. He stated that he took the 

 specimen at Oxshott, Surrey, on the 27 September last. 



The Rev. C. F. Thornewill [exhibited a black variety of the male of Argynnis 

 aglaia, taken by himself in July last on Cannock Chase ; also a number of living larvae 

 of a species of Enpitkecia feeding on the flower heads of Tanacstiim vulgare collected in 

 a limestone quarry in Leicestershire. He expressed some doubt as to the identity 



